Tripwire
by Inverse Calico
Summary: How easy it would be to succumb to that demon's gaze, to submit to his will and the hard heat of his body pressed so intimately against hers, but Mamori isn't an easy kind of girl. Hiruma is going to find it's harder to steal a kiss than he'd been expecting.


Feedback greatly appreciated!

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Mamori bustled about with exaggerated purposefulness, wielding broom and dust rag with a vigor unusual even for her, conscious of the sprawling figure at her back and the way his eyes had not once left her whenever they were alone the last few days.

She dashed at a bead of sweat dripping down her face and darted her eyes at him and away, weighing whether it was wiser to run from him or stand her ground. Both seemed entirely too _promising_ in ways that nice girls were not supposed to think about, but she found that she could not stop thinking about it, and if she was any judge at all of his body language, well, he couldn't either. There had been months leading up to this, years if she wanted to be fully honest with herself.

Perhaps it had started the first time she defied him, the first time she had shown him that she alone of all the students and adults in the school would not back down. He enjoyed the thrill of the struggle and an enemy worthy of the battle. Or perhaps she'd walked right into it the day she'd walked—been shoved, really—into his arms two weeks ago. It was all too easy to recall the hasty embrace in the crush of celebration, the accidental brush of skin on skin as his fingers dipped beneath her top when he steadied her on her feet, the calculating slide of his eyes to her breasts pressed against his sweat-soaked uniform, and her pulse pounding hard enough that blacking out seemed a reasonable solution. There was no way he hadn't felt the helter-skelter gallop of her heart through the hand she'd planted at the juncture of his neck and shoulder.

Still, whatever it was, whatever that tripwire moment of awareness, recognition, _desire_, had been, Mamori was reasonably sure she hadn't done it deliberately.

No, all things considered, Mamori wasn't surprised to find herself stalked by one predatory Hiruma Youichi. And she wasn't exactly unwilling to be captured. But that didn't mean she would stand around waiting starry-eyed when there was work to be done or that she would go down easily. The rules of play applied in this as well.

She turned her attention to the locker-room and muffled a grumble at the discarded bits of padding and uniforms left on the floor from the team's hasty departure.

When she started to bend over to collect the detritus, he moved.

Mamori's back crashed into the bank of lockers with a reverberation that echoed in the small room. She gasped, her teeth knocking together with a sharp click, and thrust the broom handle up between their bodies. The top of its shaft lodged beneath his chin, halting his descent.

His breath gusted against her mouth as they both panted, his fingers curling tighter around her shoulders. Her eyes narrowed. That was entirely too rough! Did he think she was one of his players? Did he think that was any way to treat a woman who had done everything he'd asked of her, met every challenge he'd ever thrown at her, lain awake at night with inappropriate and heated thoughts of him and his long-fingered hands on her body? Was that any way to treat a woman he had given every sign (for him) of respecting? The words to scold him in eloquent terms fled with her inability to catch her breath, so she simply tilted her chin up defiantly, gazing into those blazing devil eyes, her own fire rising to meet his.

"No," she hissed on an outward gasp, forcing her shoulders into the lockers for more leverage against the downward push of his weight while her fingers flexed around the broom. "You will ask."

"Fucking manager..." he growled, one hand sliding from her shoulder up her neck to run with surprising tenderness through her hair.

She strained up into him, half repelling and half welcoming, the broom between their bodies the only barricade, and pressed harder on his windpipe, feeling her hips align with his, her legs slip into the gap between his muscular thighs.

"You. Will. Ask," she repeated with greater firmness, each word shaped in hot air against his mouth, the distance between them almost scant enough to be negligible. All she could see of him were his eyes, pupils dilated to drown out the iris, black and fierce and heated.

How easy it would be to succumb to that demon's gaze, to submit to his will and the promise of the hard heat of his body pressed so intimately against hers, but Mamori wasn't an easy kind of girl. Her lips pulled back from her teeth in her own fierce grin.

"Hiruma." The tension she could feel in his body ratcheted up when she said his name on such a ragged purr. His hands vibrated against her, and a bead of sweat dripped from his collarbone to hers. "Ask me."

He laughed breathlessly, something softer and more stunned than his usual cackle, and his head dropped to the side, easing the pressure of the broom on his throat. Mamori tilted her head to watch him struggle to collect himself. The lids came down over those shocking, fathomless eyes, and he quivered harder than ever against her. Mamori watched the bob of his throat with fascination and a foggy wondering of how delightfully her tongue would slide along the corded tension there. His mouth found the air near her ear and set every fine hair and nerve ending there ablaze with his ragged whisper.

"Fucking manager, _please_."

And Mamori stepped up to touch the flames, letting the broom slip from her grasp and clatter forgotten to the floor as she fisted a handful of his shirt over his wildly beating heart and pulled him closer than she would have ever imagined possible.

"Okay."

His mouth slammed onto hers.


End file.
